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The state Board of Elections has posted the certified results for the 2006 general elections, including the gubernatorial race, whichÂ is very interesting.

According to these numbers, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his running mate, LG David Paterson, won 3,086,709 votes of the 4,701,065 cast.

If you do the math on that,Â it looks like Spitzer won 65.7 percent of the vote.

That, of course, doesn’t jive the the claim of the “historic” 69 percent victory which carries with itÂ a mandate for change etc. and so forth.

The answer is this: 263,845 of the total votes cast wereÂ blank, void or scattered, which basically means they weren’t counted, leaving a total of 4,437,220.

If you do the math now,Â you’ll find that Spitzer’sÂ final tally was 69.6 percent, which will explain why stories written from this day forward will likely contain the phrase “winning just shy of 70 percent of the vote.”

For the record, that’s still less than U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer’s record-breaking 71 percent win in 2004.

The previous record for a governor’s race was former Gov. Mario Cuomo’s 61.9 percent re-elect victory over Pierre Rinfret in 1990.Â The highest ever for an open seat was in 1882, when Grover Clevelandtook 58.47 percent of the vote.

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Capitol Confidential gathers the best coverage of New York politics and puts it all together. Each section - Capitol, The State Worker, New York on the Potomac, and Voices - represents a unique facet of the political scene. The Capitol section features coverage from the Times Union Capitol bureau. The State Worker is dedicated to state worker issues. New York on the Potomac offers news of interest to New Yorkers from Washington. And Voices features the best of everything else, pointing you to columnists and bloggers from across the Web.